Grace Wilkinson can easily see how close Friday's Lidsdale fire came to her home - you can measure it in feet from her front and back doors.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Just across the road, there is a blackened mess where the creek bed once stood full of pines.
"The roar as it came through the pine trees was horrific," she said.
The Lidsdale resident praised the efforts of fire-fighters who flocked to the streets on Friday afternoon to help residents protect their properties after a grass fire broke out on the corner of the Castlereagh Highway and View Street at about 1pm.
Fire-fighting efforts continued on Saturday, with aircraft dropping water on hotspots along Wolgan Road.
Grace was at home with a friend when she saw smoke from the fire early on Friday afternoon.
"I went to look out the kitchen window and I saw a spot flame up in the yard," she said.
"By the time I got my shoes on, it was up and over the hill."
Spot fires were catching around the main fire, with embers borne along on high winds.
A total fire ban had been declared on Friday due to the combination of high winds and hot temperatures.
More spot fires caught Grace's front yard alight and the nearby paddocks of the 20 acre property on Maddox Lane. A combined force of NSW Fire and Rescue brigades and Rural Fire Service crews attended the fire, working to protect multiple properties, including Grace's.
Grace said she and her friend got to work with a couple of corn bags for a start, before extending the garden hose to allow it to reach more of the flames.
"I couldn't do anything with the paddock," she said.
"I lost a hay shed full of hay and I thought I had lost the cattle."
The creek bed running alongside Maddox Lane before and after the fire.
Luckily, the cattle were accounted for on Saturday morning.
"I don't know where they ended up, they might have been in a gully somewhere."
The property, along with many others around Lidsdale, had lost a significant amount of fencing.
Grace said she had never seen a fire like that in the 52 years she has lived on the property.
"The last time I had to fight a fire like that was when I was seven years old [at Springvale]," she said.
"I never want to see anything like it again in my lifetime."
According to the NSW Rural Fire Service's latest update, the fire is still being controlled and has burned approximately 858 hectares.
Love local news? Subscribe for as little as $2 a week. Find out how here.